Underpinning Your Basement In Toronto?

This blog is designed to show you the process of building a modern radiant floor heating system in Toronto. We’ve make it simple so anybody can follow along. This is not a DIY but rather a helpful tool to organize and plan your renovation. Feel free to contact us at any time with your specific questions 🙂

Part 1: Rough In.

Part 2: Radiant Wall Assembly.

Part 3: Forced Air System (coming soon).

Part 4: Video Feature (coming soon).

Part 1 – Rough In

When anybody at Blackrock HVAC talks about roughing in radiant heating, the following materials are being installed: R6 or R10 insulation, 1/2″ Radiant PEX, heating manifold, and slab sensor. In this basement we used 1.5″ R6 insulation with steel wire mesh, but have since moved on to a modern “Puck Style” R10 insulation. R10 is required by code when floor heating is your “Primary Heating Source”. Since most of your home’s heat loss comes from the basement slab it’s a no brainer that bigger is better.

There are two things to consider when choosing which insulation panel to go with, price and height. Going traditional with wire mesh may seem cost effective at first, but taking into account the insulation, tuck taping it together, mesh, and then zip tying everything together…it equates to the same amount. It’s wiser to go with “Puck Style” because it has a higher R-Value and installs much faster for the same price. It’s IMPERATIVE that you have a discussion with your underpinning crew about going with “Puck Style” because they always have a larger height! Your crew will have to go deeper to accommodate these extra couple inches (no pun intended). The concrete slab must be 3″ thick above the insulation for it not to crack.

Here you see the radiant rough-in complete and concrete cured. Since this is a Blackrock Bespoke Project we went ahead and painted the floor to mark the mechanical room territory, and per tradition hung solid oak to be our radiant wall and focal point (optional). Our next step is to put the combo water tank and furnace in place to visualize their connections to piping and duct work.

Step 2: Radiant Wall Assembly.

Don’t let the following pictures of unknown parts intimidate you! So lets break it down. Your floor heating system needs a few key components to make it work… we need a heat source, a circulator to move the heat in the piping, and a distribution system like a manifold that distributes heat through your PEX loops. Along the way we’ve installed a pressure/temperature gauge to monitor the performance, and a water back-flow preventer so your heating water never touches the domestic water. All these components can be mounted in a functional yet aesthetic way.

Please be patient for the photography updates, our sexy secretary is in Mexico escaping a Southern Ontario winter.

In the meantime enjoy our final product photo and try to separate the Forced Air, Natural Gas, Hot Water & Hydronics in the room 🙂 Once identified please call Orest @ (647) 388-5744 to book an a appointment.